Principality of Guria

The Principality of Guria was a Georgian state on the coast of the Black Sea, ruled by the house of Gurieli from the 1460s until Russia annexed it in 1829. Guria had been a province of the unified Kingdom of Georgia since the thirteenth century, administered by hereditary eristavi governors of the Vardanisdze family, who took the title Gurieli from the land itself. The principality grew out of the fragmentation of the Georgian monarchy: in 1463 the western nobles, the Gurieli among them, defeated George VIII at the Battle of Chikhori, and Bagrat became king of Imereti and rewarded his allies with semi-independent principalities, the Gurieli receiving Guria with its seat at Ozurgeti. Giorgi I Gurieli was recognised as a sovereign prince in 1491. Through the sixteenth century the princes won de facto independence from Imereti while facing the Ottomans, whose blockade and campaigns cost Guria its southern districts of Ajaria, Lazistan and Machakheli. Later princes, Mamia II in 1610 and above all Mamia III at the turn of the eighteenth century, briefly mastered Mingrelia and even the Imeretian crown. The eighteenth century brought economic decline, Ottoman slave raids and depopulation, and the last princes took a pro-Russian line: Mamia V accepted the tsar's commission in 1810, and Russian annexation completed in 1829.